Resolution Magic Asset

What is Resolution Magic?

Resolution Magic 2D is a Unity asset that adds automatic screen resolution matching to your game. Simply install the asset and add a prefab to your scene and it will automatically work to ensure your game looks great on any device, regardless of screen resolution or ratio.

Get the asset

Resolution Magic 2D will save you tons of work to cater your game to all the different screen sizes and shapes that Unity games support.

A Demonstration

With so many devices out there it’s difficult to make your game work well on all possible screens. Here are some screens showing how Resolution Magic solves that problem.

Scenario

Imagine this sports game played by aliens from the planet Kenney:

The scene inside the Unity editor

IMPORTANT

I want the green court area to fill up as much screen space as possible. Anything in the yellow area is filler that I only want my player to see if their screen is not the same shape as the green court.

Without Resolution Magic

I designed this game with a 16:9 ratio, and here’s what it looks like on a 16:9 device:

A perfect view of whatever sport those critters are player on 16:9 screens (regardless of pixel resolution). But what about the players who don’t have 16:9 screens?

3:2 (iPhone and iPad devices):

Oh no! The goalies have fallen off the screen because it’s not as wide as the game design!

16:10 (Windows Phone / Android)

Not as bad as the 3:2, but the edges are still cut off. The game might be playable, but you can’t publish it to an app store in that state!

Unity leaves your content alone, not adapting to the screen it’s on. It’s not good enough!

With Resolution Magic 2D

Here are images from the same scene with Resolution Magic 2D enabled.

Remember, I told Resolution Magic to make the green area fill as much screen as possible and to show anything in the yellow area only if the screen is a different shape (aspect ratio) to the green court.

16:9

Since the game was designed for 16:9 this image looks identical to the one without Resolution Magic.

3:2 (iOS)

There’s the magic. Resolution Magic makes sure the entire court area stays on the screen (with some of the crowd in the yellow area visible in the ‘dead space’ created by using a different aspect ratio to what you designed). Your player sees everything they should! Like magic.

16:10 (Android, Windows Phone)

Since Resolution Magic works with any screen resolution or ratio, the 16:10 view also makes the court as large as possible without cutting anything off. Some of the crowd is still visible because the game design is wider than the screen.

Fit to background

Resolution Magic 2D also lets you set a second, larger area of interest so you can further adapt your game. In the following screenshot I have told Resolution Magic to show the entire game area instead of just the court:

The scaling still works, but now you have a view that gives users with larger, higher-resolution screens a more interesting scene, while you can still focus on the court for smaller devices where every pixel matters.

Resolution Magic 2D FAQs

I get a few questions about Resolution Magic, some of which are asked all the time.

Q: Does Resolution Magic work on [platform]?

A: Yes. Resolution Magic works completely in Unity code with no fancy addons or platform-specific code.

Q: Does Resolution Magic work with the new Unity UI tools introduced in Unity 4.6?

Q: What does it do and when?

A: Resolution Magic’s main functionality is to scale and position the camera so that your chosen content is visible to all players and fills the screen as much as possible (based on the screen ratio). It does this at the start of a scene, and once the scene starts Resolution Magic doesn’t need to do anything. You can optionally check for resolution changes (e.g. going from portrait to landscape), which can be useful on some platforms. Resolution Magic will then automatically update the view to match the new screen resolution.

Q: Does it work with Unity 5?

A: Yes. A new Unity 5-specific version has just been released, though the previous version also works in Unity 5, but requires an (automatic) update when it’s installed.

Q: Does it work with 3D games?

A: No. Resolution Magic 2D is designed to modify 2d (orthographic) camera settings. Use in 3D games is not supported at all.